Looking for Stars
by Wandering Seas
Summary: A forgotten story, a memory that's faded to the back of your mind...the dreams and lives no one remembers...where do they go? Nowhere; they stay right here, and become the building blocks for the heroes to stand up on. For the WillowClan October writing challenge.


**A/N io non aquisto. ****Capisce?**

**This is for the October writing challenge for WillowClan.**

_"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."_

~Oscar Wilde, _Lady Windermere's Fan_

Sasha sighed, looking out over the still water. They had told her she could stay. When she told them who she was, they had cringed and some had cried, but they had still offered their home up. It was their duty to be perfect, even if they hated who they had to lodge. They had still offered. She had turned it down; she didn't belong here, with all of their ranks and clans and stars. She didn't belong anywhere.

Sasha thought she had belonged somewhere. Or rather, with some_one_, but he had proven to be an evil lying, cheating, fox-heart who left her after she got knocked up with his kits. He had left her for his greed, his evil wishes; he had left her to pursue his own demonic dreams, and as much as she hated him, she still loved him. She hated herself for loving him, and yet, she couldn't. She _wanted_ to love him, to love him like she wanted him to love her.

Tail drooping, she crept under the rotten hollow log as another hacking cough shook her thin frame, forcing the painful thoughts out of her mind for a moment. She wondered about her kits…..Hawk and Moth…and Tadpole. How were they?

She knew what Hawk had become; like father, like son, but she couldn't help but be proud of him. He was her son, and she tried to hate him for what he'd become, but she couldn't. It just wasn't possible.

And poor Tadpole…..he was stuck here forever with her, somewhere between the forests and the Shadows, forced forever to gaze up at the light of StarClan. He was dead now, written away to be forgotten among the many names and places in this crazy world.

Moth. She was Mothwing now. She'd become a medicine cat…she'd had her brother cheat her way in. Oh, she felt bad about it, sure….just not enough to actually tell someone the truth.

But Sasha was still proud. She still loved her dysfunctional, messed-up family. They _were_ a messed up family; Sasha and Tigerstar, Hawkfrost and Mothwing and Tadpole, Goldenflower and Brambleclaw, Tawnypelt….maybe more….even she didn't know the extent of Tigerstar's families. She wondered if he had ever really loved anyone besides himself.

Sighing, she gazed at the murky water that separated the Place of No Stars from StarClan. It surrounded her on her small patch of dead grass and scraggly bushes. In a way, this was a worse punishment than going to the Place of No Stars. Here, Sasha was all alone with the water to drain the life and the happiness out of her.

At least she had Tadpole. She looked over at the forlorn black figure on the bank, staring across the stretch of water to the shimmering light of Starclan. Sasha vaguely saw the pale brown fur of a she-cat staring back at him. She was just like him, in a way; died a young and unnoticed death, left forever to be forgotten, staring across a dying river into the eyes of a quickly fading dead cat. Sasha sighed and turned away. There was no hope for them; they had been tossed away and fallen out of the world's memory.

0o0o0o0o

Unknown to her, another cat was staring from the opposite side of the lake, the Shadowed side. His dark eyes, usually ominous and cruel, were full of regret. Regret for what he'd done. Regret that he'd doomed them forever to a life of faded ink and stained paper. Because, in all honesty, that's all they were. A story. To the world, they were just another story, tucked away in the corner of someone's mind, one of those bound books the Twolegs wrote. They were just another sad story, but they didn't have a happy ending. That didn't happen in real life. In real life, you mess up your one chance and you're done. He messed up his one chance. Several times. Everyone thought he was the bad guy, but what did they see? His deeds, he wasn't proud of. His army, he wasn't proud of. His "clan", he didn't love.

They saw his pelt, but he had very thick fur. It got tangled sometimes; it was hard to smooth out and he didn't think he would ever be able to. He kept going on the same path; it was all he knew. He couldn't untangle the knots; they would be there until he died. Again.

Sometimes, he wished that this place didn't exist. He wished that he wasn't stuck here, forever deemed the bad guy, to stare at his biggest regret, sitting just out of reach.

The wretched kittypets! She would be better off with them, among the stars, but he didn't want to admit that. The tom would be better off there too. He didn't deserve to be there, on the edge of nowhere. They didn't deserve to be there. He deserved where he was, but they shouldn't have to pay for what he did. They didn't deserve that. They should be strolling among the stars now, not staring at them from afar. Not forgotten.

A voice snarled from the darkness, and every last bit of regret or sorrow or emotion at all dripped out of his onyx eyes and he spun around and stalked back into the shadowy trees, his tiger-like claws leaving deep ruts in the blackened grass. The cat he used to be was forgotten right then, forgotten completely.

0o0o0o0

If he had gone down, very far down, all way to the earth and then deeper even than that, he would have met the pale silhouette of the forgotten cat. He had been forgotten by his family, his leader, his friends, and by the world. To them, he was just an echo in the wind, the leaves falling off of a tree, the empty footsteps in the tunnel…..but he was so much more.

He was a savior to many cats, and a foe to none. The black cat they'll all remember and tell stories about was only alive because of him. She would have died, if not for him. And the odd blue-eyed cat, who came down here with the others, looking for the tiny kits. They would have drowned. But they didn't.

He had had a family. A mother and a father, siblings...he might've had a mate, if he had lived a little longer. He had loved the black cat. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn't stop himself. And it just hurt all the more when she left. They always left.

Fallen Leaves had helped the cats more times than anyone could count - since the beginning of time, it seemed, yet he was doomed to forever wander the labyrinthine tunnels under the earth, alone and forgotten. If he was lucky, he might see a sliver of starlight that had been reflected from puddle to puddle and back again until it reached the heart of the structure, where it fell upon the eyes of the forgotten shadow in the earth.

0o0o0o0o0o

Above him, walking where he once walked, stood a cat who was hated. Hated by her mate, by her son, by her clan, and by the world. She was the third choice; no one had ever really wanted her. She had been the last resort when the other two didn't work out very well.

She hated the stars shining on her black coat, highlighting her sleek fur. She hated StarClan for holding the heart of her mate, even after all the years had gone by. She hated ThunderClan and she hated RiverClan. She hated them all. But….she hated none. That was her problem. She tried to force herself to hate them all, but she was always just _that cat_, the one who had stolen him. The one who had everything, but she had nothing.

And her kit…..she knew what he did when he was asleep. When he woke up the next morning with cuts and scratches he claimed were from the thorns in his nest, she knew when her own son was lying to her. She knew what he was doing and wanted to hate him for it; hate him for teaming with the most hated cat in the forest. But she couldn't. She could never do anything. She was just stuck to live this life as _that cat_, never as Nightcloud, with a life and feelings and a family. She would always just be the one who ruined it all.

She could only be the best she could be at her life and trust things to work themselves out. She could only hope that she'd be able to see the stars again.

0o0o0o0

All the forgotten cats are really just faded words on paper, fallen leaves on the ground, a whisper in the wind, a sliver of the moon shining in a puddle.

They'll never be remembered, and they hate themselves for that. But they don't. Not really. They can't do it. Because they know, that the world wouldn't exist without the forgotten stories. They're the dirt that holds the trees together; the sand that holds the river to the earth. They're the air that keeps the wind in place, the building blocks to place the heroes on.

They know that, without them, the heroes would fall, and then where would we be? Exactly. They know that no matter how bad things may seem, you can _always_ look up, and see the stars.

**A/N this is what happens when you have too much soda and see a writing prompt and then write until 2:27 am. No joke.**


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